


Just a Normal, Boring Family

by ant5b



Category: DuckTales (Cartoon 2017)
Genre: AU, Adopted Children, Car Accidents, Every adult in this family be like: disappears under mysterious circumstances, Foster Care, Found Family, HDL never met Scrooge, Mystery, Scrooge is still a sad sack, good dad donald, season 1 AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-15
Updated: 2020-09-09
Packaged: 2020-12-16 17:48:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 18,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21040250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ant5b/pseuds/ant5b
Summary: For as long as the boys could remember, it had always been them and Uncle Donald against the world.When he disappears, they find the world is stranger, more mysterious, and far more dangerous than they ever could have realized.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Depending on the response we'll see if I continue this story! I wanted to try writing something multichapter with just the family, so we'll see how it goes!

It’s still dark out when Uncle Donald wakes them up. 

Out of the three of them, Huey is the lightest sleeper. He’s sitting up in bed almost from the moment their uncle enters their room, the heavy door groaning on its hinges as he pushes it open. It's unwieldy and solid metal, and would look more at home on a deep, dark submarine than their small, creaking houseboat with peeling white paint. It's thick enough to block out the sound of Uncle Donald's furious gabbling when he works himself into a lather, and it's a running joke that it could probably keep out a small army, or a nuclear bomb too. 

Louie is next to wake. He only needs only a slight shake before he’s grumbling and rubbing his eyes.

Dewey is the most difficult, refusing to let go of his blankets or move at all the moment he’s cognizant of someone trying to wake him. “Nooo, Uncle Donald, five more minutes,” he whines into his pillow, unaware that it's nowhere near morning and forgetting that it is in fact Saturday. 

Donald gently but firmly guides Dewey by the shoulder until he’s mostly sitting up. He tugs Dewey's arm through his jacket sleeve. “Come on, boys, get out of bed,” he quacks, and his garbled voice is strained. “Grab something warm to wear.”

“Uncle Donald, what’s going on?” Huey is the only one awake enough to ask. He's already climbing down from the topmost bunk. 

“Yeah, what the heck,” Louie grumbles as he shuffles over to the end of his bed to grab his green hoodie where he always leaves it near the post. 

Uncle Donald doesn't call Louie out for his language. He hasn't turned on any lights except for the lamp in the living room, and in the dim glow Donald's eyes are bloodshot and shadowed by exhaustion, his beak clenched tight. He fails to answer Huey or Louie’s questions, focused instead on getting Dewey out of bed willingly. 

At present, Dewey is clutching his pillow and whatever he can reach of his blankets, complaining almost unintelligibly. He remains determinedly limp despite Donald’s best attempts at getting him to sit of his power and after a moment Donald simply scoops him up, blankets still dangling from Dewey’s grasp. 

“C’mon,” Donald warbles, holding Dewey with one arm and using the other to herd Huey and Louie out of the room. Dewey protests futilely. 

Huey and Louie barely have time to so much as exchange a glance before they're tripping over their feet to meet the pace that Donald is setting. They're allowed a brief glimpse of the living room; the lone lamp throws into sharp relief a state of disarray that wasn't there when they went to sleep a mere handful of hours ago. It looks as though the room has been ransacked, cardboard boxes gaping empty with their lids and contents strewn about. 

For years, Louie would comb the beach in search of buried treasure. He imagined himself the next Scrooge McDuck, hoped that maybe some of Uncle Gladstone's luck could've rubbed off on him. His heart his leapt at every glint of metal in the sunlight, until countless disappointments left him unable to muster anything other than apathy for the rusty cans, glass bottles, and garbage he would inevitably find. He was a poor kid who lived on a houseboat in a dirty marina, not some treasure hunter from legend. 

But among the crumbled papers and strange, old looking books scattered across their faded rug, Louie swears he catches a glint of something gold sticking out of one of the cardboard boxes laying on its side. 

They reach the stairs and Donald nudges them forward with a hand against their backs, gentle but insistent. So they climb the stairs and step onto the houseboat’s chilled deck without stopping, crossing the gangplank to the docks where their uncle’s rundown car is parked.

It’s engine is already running, a startling growl that cuts through the almost dead quiet of night. The marina is dark and the wooden dock creaks gently under their feet. The other boats are little more than black smudges against the navy sea and sky. In the distance, the lights of downtown Duckburg flicker like a faraway dream.

Donald places Dewey in the backseat, ignoring him when he grumbles, “I’m not a baby!” He looks to Huey and Louie, features obscured in the dark. 

“Hue, Lou,” he says, “let’s get in the car.”

They comply, because they have no reason not to. If there’s one thing that will never change it’s that they trust Uncle Donald implicitly. But fear curdles low in their stomachs, even Dewey, who wraps himself grumpily in a cocoon of blankets and can’t shake the feeling that something is terribly wrong. 

Donald wastes no time in peeling away from the docks the moment they’ve closed their doors, abused tires squealing. The sudden burst of speed throws them back in their seats. 

“Where are we going?” Huey asks at the same time Dewey demands, “What’s even happening right now?”

“We’re going on a little trip,” Donald says without glancing back at them. With the street lights flickering by, they catch a glimpse of his brittle smile. “Nothing to worry about, boys.”

“But why are we leaving so late—or early, I guess. And why was this so last minute?” Huey insists. 

Louie pushes himself up in his seat and cranes his head over his shoulder to look into the trunk. Haphazardly stacked in the back are a pile of suitcases and duffel bags from their hall closet. 

“It feels like we’re running away,” Louie says. It’s a familiar feeling. For him, it’s having to pack up a lemonade stand he’s operating without a permit or the poker game he’s set up outside Chums when he sees a police officer round the street corner. It’s the rabbit racing in his chest but without any of the exhilaration. All he feels is fear. 

“We’re going somewhere you boys will be safe,” Donald says, and it shouldn’t be surprising to hear from him of all people. This is the same man who makes them wear life jackets inside the houseboat when he isn’t home. But he glances in the rear view mirror as he says it, looking  _ behind,  _ not at them and his grip is tight around the steering wheel. This doesn’t feel like typical, overprotective Uncle Donald. 

“Safe from what?” Dewey challenges. It’s hardly compelling what with him in his footie pajamas. 

“We’re going to see Scrooge McDuck,” Donald says instead of answering the question, but for a moment all thought of danger flies from their heads because  _ Scrooge McDuck?  _ The legend, their hero since they were small and first learned of his exploits in their elementary school textbooks? The one who their Uncle Donald has only ever acknowledged with cold detachment? 

“How do you know Scrooge McDuck?  _ The  _ Scrooge McDuck!” 

“Why’ve you been holding out on us, Uncle Donald?”

“I thought you didn’t like him? Why are we going there?”

As they explode with questions, Donald looks back at them over his shoulder. Under normal circumstances, he would never take his eyes off the road. 

“He’s...he owes me a favor. Once we’re there I’ll explain everything.”

“Okay,” Huey says, as his mind spins with possibilities. “As long as you promise to explain.”

“Boo!” Dewey retorts with feeling. “Tell us now!”

“Yeah,” Louie pipes up, despite the ice-cold pit in his stomach that this news has failed to banish. “What’s with all the secrets?”

“Boys,” Donald starts to say, but never gets to finish. 

Something collides into the car with terrible force, jerking them against their seat belts so roughly that they’ll find bruises later. The sound of crunching metal deafens them. Glass shatters over their heads as they spin out on the road, brakes squealing.

Blackness swallows them whole, like a sack yanked over their heads, and they know no more. 

When they come to, it’s to the car’s shadowed interior. The seat belt warning sign is blinking, its steady chime almost drowning out their individual groans of confusion and pain. They’ve been knocked into a ditch on the side of the road, hood first, and the downward tilt is so steep that their seat belts dig into their skin. Smoke rises from under the canted hood. 

There’s no evidence of the car that hit them. 

There’s also no evidence of Uncle Donald. 

The silence behind the steering wheel is more terrifying than the crash itself. But when they look, frantically unbuckling their seat belts and climbing over the front seats like Uncle Donald always chastises them for, they’re the only ones in the car.

The front seat is empty, like it was never occupied in the first place. Uncle Donald’s door gapes open into the absolute darkness of the world outside, cold and all encompassing.

  
  



	2. Chapter 2

They find sleep hard to come by without the sounds of the marina. 

Their foster parents have a strict eight p.m. curfew, and while the consequences of breaking it are not elaborated on through words, Mrs. Featherby’s scowl as she laid out the house rules spoke volumes.

It’s currently edging into midnight and this is pushing their luck, even for them. But they insisted on sharing a bed instead of splitting up among the other foster kids, and tonight Louie won’t stop tossing and turning, Huey can’t sleep if his brothers aren’t sleeping, and Dewey isn’t in bed at all. All three of them sneaking out of their room is just the inevitable conclusion. 

The hallway is utterly dark. They can hear the television playing downstairs, the sound distant and strange. Louie uses the glow of his phone’s screen to lead the way, already well acquainted with which creaking floorboards to avoid. He and Huey creep past two closed bedroom doors on their way to the one place they know Dewey will be. 

The window at the end of the hall looks out onto the city below. The Featherbys’ home is in Rockerduck Estates, high on the side of the hill, and from the second-story window one can peer out over Duckburg’s sprawling cityscape. If one knows where to look, they might even see the small, muted cluster of lights that make up Hookbill Harbor. 

Dewey is leaning against the windowsill when they find him. He doesn’t look up as they approach. 

Huey punches him in the arm.

“What the—hey!” Dewey hisses, rubbing his arm as he whirls around. _ “Ow!” _

“You’re going to get us in trouble,” Huey whispers harshly. “This is your fourth time sneaking out after lights-out. Next time I won’t come get you!”

“We all know that’s a lie, Hubert,” Louie says, ambling over to join Dewey at the windowsill. 

Huey sputters indignantly. “No, it’s not, I’ll—someone has to teach—you can’t just—” He trails off as his brothers turn to him, Louie looking expectant and Dewey amused. “Fine,” he says, trudging over to the window, “So I won’t abandon my brother. Sue me.”

He glares at Dewey when he does a poor job of muffling his snicker. “Hey, you don’t see me complaining,” he whispers. 

Their view of Duckburg is an astonishing one. With the window open, a breeze that tinges of sea salt wafts over their faces, and the rumble of cars reaches them muted. The city is luminous in the dark, a thousand gleaming points of light, while above them hangs the barest sliver of a waning crescent moon. 

When they were smaller than they are now, Uncle Donald would take them onto the deck of the houseboat to stargaze. If they were good and didn’t stray from his side, he wouldn’t make them put on their life jackets. 

They spent many nights stargazing, most of them while wearing life jackets. 

He guided them through the constellations, a hand on their shoulders and his heartbeat beneath their ears. Donald told them about the myths of Selene, goddess of the moon, and her brother Storkules, god of heroes. He spun tales of genies, dragons and ghosts, evil robots and ancient cities of gold. 

Donald told his stories like he was there and in riveting detail that made them want to try their hand at scaling Mt. Neverrest, besting a mummy and tricking a sphinx. But the stories were kid’s stuff, and adventure disappeared from Duckburg when Scrooge McDuck disappeared into his mansion. The loftiest goals they’d imagined for themselves living on the marina was stealing the houseboat away to Cape Suzette, which after research by Louie proved not nearly as exciting as their imaginations had made it out to be. 

Now, living in a foster home more lavish than anything they’ve ever seen, those goals seem further away than ever. 

“We should go back to bed,” Huey says, rubbing his arms. The night air has grown cold. 

“Yeah probably,” Dewey replies distractedly. 

“Mhmm,” Louie hums, not moving an inch.

“C’mon, guys,” Huey says, stepping closer to his brothers. “Let's go back to bed before the Featherbys finds us. We need them to _ like _us.”

“What we _need,” _Louie snaps, rounding on Huey, “is to get Uncle Donald back.” 

“Yeah, or did you forget he’s missing?” Dewey adds. 

Huey shoves him. 

“Of course I didn’t forget,” he bites back as loudly as he dares. “But this is our third foster home in two months. If we keep doing stuff like this, if we keep not listening, they could separate us. We might never see each other _ or _Uncle Donald ever again.”

Dewey scowls. He steps forward as though to push Huey, too. 

Louie moves in between them, shoving them apart. “Don’t you get it, none of that matters,” he utters in a trembling voice. “We need to get out of here and save Uncle Donald to prove that he didn’t _ abandon _us.”

Huey and Dewey cluster beside him, their animosity forgotten. 

“C’mon, there’s no way Uncle Donald abandoned us,” Dewey says. “He’s too stubborn to give up on anything, least of all us.”

“Uncle Donald loves us, you know that,” Huey murmurs, wrapping Louie in a one-armed hug. “He was kidnapped. He’d never leave us by choice.”

Louie sniffs, rubbing his beak with the edge of his sleeve. “Yeah. Yeah I know.”

Though it was sometimes hard to remember. 

By the time the police arrived to answer Huey’s distraught 911 call, Uncle Donald had already been missing for thirteen minutes. 

Huey bundled himself and his brothers in Dewey’s blankets and they sat waiting by the side of the road in the pitch dark with only the busted car’s headlights cutting through the swirling fog and their phones’ flashlights to see by. All three of them had been in tears, bruised and aching and terrified because the only constant in their life had vanished without a trace. 

One of the police officers was running to them before her squad car even came to a complete stop. Not even the paramedics got out of their ambulance quicker. 

“Are you kids alright?” she asked, gathering them close. “Are you hurt?”

They shook their heads, wiping at tear-stained faces and trying to force out the words. As always, Dewey was the first to find his voice. 

“U-Uncle Donald—he’s gone!”

The officer’s expression went slack in sympathy and horror. She glanced briefly at the wrecked car. 

“Gone?” she repeated. _ “Mijo, _do you mean he’s—”

“He wasn’t there when we woke up,” Huey cut her off, so frantic he didn’t even apologize for interrupting. “We think—we think someone took him while we were unconscious, someone who was after him! He made us leave in a rush and he packed up all of our stuff—”

“Okay,” the officer said gently, “okay, boys. I’m going to let the paramedics here take a look at you, and we can continue this conversation in a little bit, okay?”

“What?” Louie demanded, eyes shiny with tears but expression furious. “We just told you our uncle’s missing, you can’t just brush us off!”

But she could. And so could the officer who took their statement at the station. And the police captain, when they insisted he hear them out. As well as the CPS worker who came to collect them in the early hours of dawn. All of them sympathetic, all of them pitying, and all of them refusing to believe a word the three of them said. 

_ Your uncle wasn’t in a good place, financially. _

_ He was jobless and in debt. _

_ He might’ve owed people money. _

_ I know it’s hard, but you may have to accept the possibility that your uncle chose to leave. _

Their protests fell on deaf ears. Insisting that their uncle would never abandon them, that it was just bad luck that had him bouncing from job to job, that he _ loved _them, all proved fruitless. To make matters worse, their only other family member was Uncle Gladstone and they hadn’t heard from him in months. Every phone number they had for him turned up disconnected, and without him there was no one left to vouch for them.

“Call Scrooge McDuck!” they’d begged at the police station, “Uncle Donald knows him! He was taking us to his mansion. Please, just call Scrooge McDuck and you’ll see we’re telling the truth.”

Unsurprisingly, they didn’t take the word of three distraught nobodies about their nobody uncle seriously. And despite their instintence, despite their tears, they were handed off to CPS and placed in their first foster home the following morning. 

Now they stand at the Featherbys’ second story window, staring out into Duckburg Bay and pretending they can see the houseboat in the darkness. 

“We’ll show everyone we weren’t lying,” Dewey says, hushed, but no less full of conviction. He nudges Louie. “Then nobody can say anything bad about Uncle Donald ever again.”

Louie folds his arms tightly, gripping the sides of his pajama shirt until his knuckles risk jutting out. “We’ll prove that he didn’t abandon us like Mom did,” he says, quiet and bitter, with all the delicacy of a bomb. 

“Louie,” Huey breathes, too startled to be admonishing. Dewey just stares, his beak agape. 

“What? It’s true,” Louie retorts. “You remember what Uncle Donald said. She left before we even hatched. What kind of parent does that? Meanwhile Uncle Donald has been here every day for the last eleven—” he falters, and his eyes go glossy with the sheen of tears. “Or—or almost eleven years.”

“We don’t know the full story of what happened with Mom,” Huey says weakly.

“Uncle Donald can tell us when we find him,” Dewey says with a sharp nod, though he still looks shaken. 

“And how on Earth are we going to find him?” Huey asks. “We don’t even know who would want to kidnap Uncle Donald in the first place. He’s just...he’s just _ Uncle Donald.” _

“I can think of one trillionaire we can ask,” Louie mutters. He points at the mansion perched far away on Killmotor Hill, a blot against the navy blue of the night sky. Within the home of the Richest Duck in the World not a single window gleams. 

“We can’t just _ walk up _to the gates of McDuck Manor,” Huey hisses. 

“Course not,” Louie says. “We’ll take the bus.”

Dewey grins. “We’re really gonna Dewey this?”

“Not if you keeps using that pun.”

“Guys, this is Scrooge McDuck we’re talking about,” Huey insists. “He’ll probably refuse to even see—” His phone chimes in his hand, forestalling any further argument as he glances down at the screen. A heartbeat later, he goes still. 

“Oh,” he whispers. 

“Hubert?” Dewey says. He reaches out to clutch at Huey’s sleeve. 

Huey holds his phone up so they can see the lock screen, glowing in the dark. The photo is candid shot Louie got of Uncle Donald sobbing at Huey’s induction as a Junior Woodchuck Ten-Star General. When Uncle Donald saw it he’d always go a little red and ruffle Huey’s hair, and even now Huey hadn’t the heart to change it. 

However, it’s the calendar reminder, made exactly one year ago today, that draws their attention instead of the photo. 

** _April 15th_ **

_ Execute the best eleventh birthday party ever! _🥳🥳🥳

Huey silently drops the arm holding his phone.

The weight of what they’ve lost hangs over them like a pall, suffocating and dark. They stand apart from one another, each lost in their own grief, before Louie reaches out to hold Huey’s hand like they haven’t done since they were six. That small point of contact brings Huey back to himself, the oldest sibling, and with his hand clasped around Louie’s he draws him into a hug. He’s still holding his phone in his other hand but that doesn’t stop him from extending his free arm to Dewey, who throws himself at his brothers with such force they all stumble a few steps back.

“Some birthday, huh, guys?” Louie says hoarsely. 

Their laughter is strained with the effort of keeping tears at bay. They are not entirely successful. 

“You two were right,” Huey says fiercely. “We’re getting answers from Scrooge McDuck whether he wants to give them or not.” 

Dewey breaks away from the hug to pump his fists in the air. “Release the duke!” he crows, ignoring his brothers’ attempts to shush him.

The lights in the hallway flip on with blinding abruptness. Mrs. Featherby stands over them, her hair in rollers and an enraged expression on her face. 

“What are you three doing out of bed?” 

  
  
  
  
  


Darkness plays tricks on the mind, casting shadows and creating monsters where none exist. 

McDuck Manor is a treasure trove of rare and unusual items that turn fearsome in the dark. Portraits with eyes that follow you, gaunt-faced tribal masks, and dozens upon dozens of cursed creatures and totems buried in the bedrock of the mountain that make the floorboards hum with ill intent. 

Scrooge McDuck is one of only three people capable of navigating his home under the cover of night. One is a former spy. The other died eight years ago. 

He travels without flashlight, candle or wick. The door he seeks, to the left of his study, he could practically find in his sleep. Located at the heart of the mansion, the room beyond is the most easily defensible. It was intended to be accessible to all three of them, especially in the case of an emergency. 

He unlocks the door with the key he keeps in the desk of his study. 

The furniture within the room is draped with white sheets and dust an inch thick. He covers his nose as he draws back thick velvet drapes from the lone window, and a year’s worth of accumulated dust billows in his face. Weak moonlight creeps into the room as he coughs up the dust he inhaled, painting his weary face silver. 

Scrooge looks up once he’s no longer wheezing, taking in the pale sliver that is tonight’s moon. He fishes his Number One Dime out from under his sleep shirt and clutches at the coin so tightly it leaves an indentation in his palm. 

He turns around to face the room. It looks even emptier in the weak light, every piece of shrouded furniture a misshapen phantom to his eyes. He drags the sheet off the room’s lone armchair and steps away to avoid the subsequent cloud of dust. Before sitting down, he approaches a covered set of drawers against the opposite wall. Atop it lies an envelope, dingy with age, and Scrooge picks it up with care. He brings it with him, but he doesn’t so much as touch the flap until he’s taken a seat on the plush armchair. 

Scrooge handles the envelope as if it were made of glass. The handwriting on the front is long faded, the letter within is hardly more than a scrap of paper. He reads it all the same, though he’s had the brief message memorized for a decade. 

Eleven years, to be exact. 

_ Della’s sons hatched 4/15. _

_ -D _

“Ach, Della,” he murmurs into dead air. “Eleven years old. Your bairns are practically all grown up.”

He looks up at the portrait looming over his head. Ignoring his own foolish, grinning face staring back at him, he studies the pride in Della’s stance, the confidence in Donald’s eyes. He feels their judgement, though whether real or imagined hardly matters. They wouldn’t be the only ghosts lurking in the mansion. 

“I’m sorry you never got to see them, lass,” Scrooge says, his treacherous voice breaking. He clenches his eyes shut, steeling himself with a deep inhale. This is the one night a year he enters the nursery. His words need to matter. 

“I’m sorry about a lot of things,” he says, and musters a smile. “But knowing your brother, those lads are bound to have a right corker of a birthday.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Would Gladstone have been able to escape the House of Lucky Fortune on his own?


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapters 1 & 2 have been partially edited and rewritten, so be sure to go check those out!

Two days before Uncle Donald disappears, a weird girl shows up at the marina. 

They’re on the deck of the houseboat doing chores. Or rather, Huey is doing chores and Dewey and Louie are doing their best to distract him. It’s laundry day and Huey’s hanging the clothes Donald just washed on the clothesline outside, carefully pinning them up with laundry clips. 

“I bet Scrooge McDuck doesn’t do his own laundry,” Dewey says. He’s laying on a deckchair beside Huey, his eyes closed against the glare of the sun. 

_“You_ don’t even do your own laundry,” Huey retorts, and resists the very unbrotherly urge to drop the sopping wet hoodie he’s holding on Dewey’s face. 

Louie’s sitting on Dewey’s other side, his arms folded behind his head. He’s wearing a pair of novelty sunglasses he won in a bet against a new kid at Funzo’s a few weeks ago. “I bet Scrooge McDuck has an army of people waiting on him hand and foot,” he says dreamily. “There’s probably a guy to run the washing machine and a different guy to run the dryer and a whole other guy that just gets paid to fold.”

“Well Scrooge McDuck might have that but we don’t,” Huey replies. “So how about you two help me before Uncle Donald comes out and realizes we’re not wearing life...jackets.” Huey trails off for no reason that his brothers can discern. 

Dewey looks up, shielding his gaze with a hand over his eyes. “Uh, Hue?”

“You good, Hubert?” Louie asks, not bothering to move from his comfortable repose. 

Huey’s attention is arrested by something on the other side of the fluttering clothesline, in the direction of shore. Without rising from their chairs neither Dewey or Louie have any idea what is so interesting. 

“There’s a kid on the pier,” Huey says at last. “I think she might be lost. She keeps looking around.”

Dewey pushes himself up out of his chair and steps around Huey to get a clear view. “Huh,” he says once he’s peering over the railing. “She does look kinda lost. Should we ask if she needs help?”

“Does she look rich?” Louie asks. 

“Not really,” Dewey says. 

“Then no.”

_ “Louie,” _ Huey gasps. “Just for that, we’re gonna be extra helpful.” He turns back to the railing and waves frantically, like he’s flagging down a passing ship. “Hello! Excuse me, miss, are you lost? Miss?”

Louie rolls his eyes behind his sunglasses. “Classic Goldilocks Gambit. Play the lost innocent, get an invitation to come inside and use the phone and take everything not nailed down.” He begins the arduous process of rising to his feet complete with exaggerated groans of pain. “Step aside, brothers. Let’s see what I’m up against.”

He joins Huey and Dewey at the railing, pushing his sunglasses up onto his head as he idly scans the dock. 

It’s midday and the marina is flush with boats unloading ruddy-faced fisherman. They walk with purpose in big, burly groups, keen to take a get out of the sun and wet their whistles at Chums just down the way. Among the clamor, the girl sticks out like a sore thumb. She doesn’t seem to know where she’s going, turning this way and that with every boat she passes, as though in search of something. Gangly and wearing an oversized sweater that only makes her look thinner, she could easily pass for a lost teen. 

“Hey!” Louie shouts. “Do you need help or whatever?”

The breeze blows her long pink bangs into her eyes when she whirls around to face them. She goes stock still rather than respond, her expression twisted into a grimace. 

Behind them, the door leading into the houseboat bursts open and Uncle Donald spills out onto the deck, tripping over the last crooked step. “What’s with all the yelling?” he demands. “And why aren’t you three wearing your life jackets?”

They turn to face him in unison, excuses at the ready.

“I was hanging up the laundry,” Huey says. 

“And I was distracting him,” Dewey adds. 

“Then some weird girl showed up,” Louie finishes, slipping his sunglasses back over his eyes. “We think she’s lost or something. I dunno.”

“Lost?” Donald repeats, his brow flattening in concern. He walks up behind them, peering down at the dock from over their heads. He frowns. “Boys, there’s nobody there.”

“What!” Huey cries, spinning back around. 

Dewey and Louie turn as well, and true to Donald’s word the dock is nearly empty. A few straggling fisherman are ambling along the pier, but the girl is gone. 

“What the heck? Did she jump into the water?” Louie says skeptically. 

“She vanished without a trace,” Dewey enthuses in a loud whisper. “Do you think she was a ghost?”

“Ghosts don’t exist,” Huey says haughtily, their only warning that he’s about to quote from the Junior Woodchuck Guidebook. 

Donald puts his arms around them, guiding them toward the entrance to the houseboat. _ “I _think you boys need to be wearing your life jackets if you’re going to stay out here,” he says firmly.

“But what about the laundry?” Huey exclaims. 

“Well it was Louie’s turn to hang it up, so I’m sure he can take over from here,” Donald says, fixing Louie with a mildly reproachful Look. “Right after he gets his life jacket.”

Louie groans, slumping over for emphasis, but ultimately does as he’s told. His brothers run ahead of him, their voices carrying from the bottom of the stairs, while he shuffles very slowly after them. He half expects Uncle Donald to chastise him for it, but when Louie glances over his shoulder, Uncle Donald isn’t on the deck at all. 

He hurries back over to the railing, made uneasy by Uncle Donald’s silent departure. Relief is a weight lifting off his chest when he sees Donald standing on the pier in front of their mailbox. He’s frowning down at the letter in his hand, which isn’t an uncommon occurrence, except that it can’t possibly be a bill. Huey already collected the mail, little over an hour ago, while he was waiting for Donald to finish washing the laundry. 

Whatever Uncle Donald reads, it makes his eyes go wide. He spins around to scour the pier. It’s just as empty as it was moments ago, and before long he turns back to the paper in his hands. He stares at it for a brief eternity before crumpling it in his fist. 

In fear and in anger, their Uncle Donald is loud and explosive, full of flailing limbs and unintelligible quacking. His bouts of silence are commonplace the morning of his birthday, or when he’s up late in the kitchen with a mug of black coffee, notebook, and calculator, working on that month’s budget; exceptions both. 

Only now they are joined by this moment: Uncle Donald clenching a piece of paper in a shaking hand, silent and almost still, looking up at the ghost of the moon in the clear blue sky. 

Louie moves away from the railing before Uncle Donald can notice him and hurries into the belly of the houseboat to tell his brothers what he saw. 

  
  
  
  


“Walk me through it one more time? You think your uncle was kidnapped by a Peregrine Pan cult of children looking for a new dad?”

“Well when you say it like that it just sounds ridiculous.” Dewey scowls, crossing his arms over his chest. 

“That’s because it _ is _ridiculous,” Huey says, rolling his eyes

“I don’t know,” Louie says with a shrug. “I think Uncle Donald is pretty good dad material.”

Gosalyn laughs as shoves Louie, sending him flopping onto his back with little effort. None of them begrudge her for it, least of all Louie, who curls up on the grass like he’s about to take a nap. Their new friend’s smiles are rare and hardwon, disuse making them seem ill fitting as though her face had forgotten the necessary muscles. 

The park is pleasantly warm today, their patch of grass shaded by a nearby copse of trees. A handful of feet away lies a footpath that bustles with joggers, kids, and parents pushing strollers. Far enough that they’re out of earshot, their foster parents relax on a picnic blanket. It’s idyllic, deceptively so. 

Relocating to St. Canard was a hardship unlike any the three of them had ever known. They grew up on a houseboat with the sounds of the marina for company, and their three foster homes in Duckburg were all in the too-quiet suburbs. Mrs. Cavanaguh’s foster home is a towering brownstone half a block from downtown St. Canard, with a sidewalk that’s choked with pedestrians at all hours. The sounds of cars and televisions and voices keep them awake long into the night. 

Most importantly, without Gosalyn, they wouldn’t have lasted long in the home’s established hierarchy. 

The first night they spent in the room they were sharing with two other boys, Tank, a burly, fifteen year old goose, snatched Huey’s phone out of his hands. 

“What’s this? A goodbye gift from Mommy and Daddy?” he taunted, holding Huey’s phone over his head. 

“No, actually, I paid for half of it,” Huey corrected him nervously. In his pajamas, he felt distinctly vulnerable as Tank and the other boy, a St. Bernard named Bolivar, sneered at him. “Please don’t rearrange my apps, it took me two hours to organize them by both aesthetic appeal and habitual use.”

Dewey stepped in front of him. “Give my brother back his phone!” he snapped, jumping with an outstretched arm to try and yank it away. 

Tank held the phone just out of Dewey’s reach. “Oh yeah?” he replied. “What’ll you give me for it?”

“Gentlemen,” Louie said, coming up to stand beside Dewey. He put a restraining hand on his shoulder to keep him from jumping pointlessly again. “This kind of stereotypical bullying is a little beneath you, don’t you think? I’m sure we can come to some sort of agreement.”

Tank scoffed. “_ Wow _. Are you that much of a girl that you need these two losers defending you?”

“What’s wrong with being a girl?”

All five of them froze at the sound of her voice, even Tank with his arm still keeping Huey’s phone suspended over their heads. 

Their first impression of Gosalyn was that of a superhero. She was standing in the open doorway of their room, her silhouette illuminated from behind by the lights in the hallway. Though she was easily a third of Tank’s weight and wearing an too-big shirt and sleep shorts at the time, casual menace radiated off her like heat from a furnace. 

“Swanson,” she said congenially. 

“Waddlemeyer,” Tank muttered. 

“I’d give the kid’s phone back if I were you,” she said. “Unless you want Cavanaugh to know who really broke that window last week.”

Tank growled, and the triplets took a wary step back. She was unaffected in the face of his ire, looking back at him expectantly for one pregnant moment. He broke the staring contest off with a huff. “Whatever,” Tank snapped, shoving the phone back at them carelessly. Louie barely caught it before it hit the floor. Tank and the other boy stalked out, though they took care not to touch the girl as they crossed the threshold. 

_"That _ was amazing,” Dewey announced not seconds later. “How’d you do that!”

She shrugged, smirking as she entered the room properly. “There’s an art to dealing with Tank,” she replied. “And that’s being bigger and badder than him.” Her hair was a riot of red curls that bounced as she threw herself on the lowest bunk of their triple bunk bed, which was always Louie’s by default. She made herself comfortable. 

“Thanks for your help,” Huey said, accepting his phone back from Louie with a sigh of relief typically reserved for the safe recovery of an endangered loved one. “I had to sell 600 boxes of Fuddy Duddies to afford half of the down payment on this baby.”

“Junior Woodchucks, huh?” she asked. _ “Woof. _ You’re lucky I got here when I did.” 

“Yeah, about that, uh, 'Waddlemeyer,'” Louie said, eyes narrowed in suspicion. “What’s your angle? Why did you help us?”

She sat up, smirk slipping off her face. “Name’s Gosalyn. And I helped you out ‘cause you guys have no idea where you are.”

The three of them blinked. 

“Um,” Dewey said uncertainly. “We’re...we’re in St. Canard?”

Gosalyn rolled her eyes. “No. Where we’re standing right now? It’s your last hope.” She met each of their stunned expressions with a grave one of her own. “You’re a problem child. We all are: you, me, Tank. That’s why we’re here. The Cavanaughs takes the kids nobody else wants and helps them work through whatever’s wrong with them so that they get into a better home outside of St. Canard. So that they’ll have prospects.”

“And this explains why you’re helping us...how?” Louie asked, still wary but more shaken than before. 

She smiled, a humorless twist of her beak. “Because no one helped me. I don’t want anyone to go through the same thing if I can help it. Plus, you guys were pretty pathetic.”

“Hey!” Dewey exclaimed, smiling despite his affronted tone. “What would you have done?”

“Kicked him in the shin, obviously,” Gosalyn replied. “Or y’know, somewhere else down south.”

Huey winced, though Louie nodded in grudging approval. Dewey had stars in his eyes. 

“You’re, like, the coolest person I’ve ever met,” he said. 

“I know, Blue.”

“Dewey,” he replied. 

“I’m Huey,” Huey added. 

“Louie,” Louie said. 

“Well that shouldn’t be too hard to remember,” Gosalyn snorted. “Welcome to St. Canard, Huby, Bluey, and Phooey. Lesson one: make sure you come down for breakfast half an hour early or Tank’ll hoard all the pancakes for himself.”

Over the next two weeks, all the while they adjusted to life in their fourth foster home, they never once stopped thinking about their plan to seek out Scrooge McDuck. Except now they were an entire city away and actually getting to Killmotor Hill would take careful preparation. 

Gosalyn was a big reason why the change in scenery didn’t overwhelm them. She kept Tank away from them with hardly more than a raised brow at best and a whack to his ankles with her hockey stick at worse. When Mrs. Cavanaugh and her wife Mrs. Stones’ well-meaning concern became too much to bear, she would draw their attention away with pestering questions or complaints of a stomachache. 

On weekends, their foster parents didn’t enforce a strict bedtime per se, so the living room was where most of the kids would camp out until well into the night. That was how they spent their second Saturday evening, clustered on the couch while Ottoman Empire played on the television. 

None of them had begrudged Louie’s choice, especially when literal tears had sprung to his eyes upon hearing the theme music. They all recognized the need for familiarity and the comfort it could bring. They’d had little access to television in the last two and a half months, what with school and bouncing from strict foster homes to even stricter ones, so Louie was ten episodes behind, a fact he bemoaned repeatedly and at length during every commercial break. 

Huey was braiding Gosalyn’s hair, humming along to let Louie know he was listening. On Gosalyn’s other side, Dewey alternated between trying to distract Huey and agreeing with Louie. 

Louie had just finished lamenting the Barks’, their second round of foster parents, refusal to pay for cable when Gosalyn spoke up. 

“How many houses does this make for you guys?” she asked, fiddling with a loose thread in her sleep shirt. 

Behind her, Huey sighed. “Including this one, that makes four in two and a half months.”

She whistled. “Hey, not bad. What got you kicked out of the first three?”

“The first one was my fault,” Huey mumbled. “I let my temper get the best of me.”

“Temper?” Gosalyn repeated curiously. She glanced back at Huey who flushed in embarrassment. 

“He unleashed the Duke!” Dewey said. “It was _ awesome._ I think he broke their stairs.”

Louie scowled at the television screen. “The Rosas wouldn’t take us back to the houseboat when Huey realized he’d left his Woodchuck sash behind.”

Gosalyn’s expression softened and she nudged Huey’s shoulder with her own. He smiled weakly in return, and patted her hand when he finished her braid. 

“What about you, Gosalyn?” Dewey asked during the next round of commercials. 

“Eh,” she said. “I’ve been here three months. But I’ve been an orphan for...wow. Almost a year.”

“You’re an orphan?” Huey asked quietly. 

“Yup,” Gosalyn replied, popping the ‘p.’ “My mom and dad died when I was really little, I don’t even remember them. It was just me and Grandpa my whole life. Until...y’know. ”

Dewey nodded because broken families? That was something the three of them understood. “It’s always been us and Uncle Donald against the world,” he said. “We have another uncle, but we haven't heard from him in forever.”

Huey folded himself small in the corner of the couch, frowning hard. “Good riddance, like Uncle Donald always says,” he muttered. 

“Hey,” Louie countered, “I’m sure Uncle Gladstone would help if he knew. We just haven’t been able to get a hold of him.”

“And how _ ‘lucky’ _is that? He’s leaving all the work of finding Uncle Donald to us!” 

“Finding—I thought your uncle ditched you?” Gosalyn cut in, brow furrowed in confusion. 

“Uncle Donald didn’t _ditch_ us,” Louie retorted hotly. “He—” 

Louie silenced himself at Huey’s warning look. The three of them exchanged loaded glances around Gosalyn, weighing, judging, communicating without words as they had for years. 

She looked on in quiet discontent, clearly irritated at being kept out of the loop but understanding the need for secrecy. Though their time without Uncle Donald had been comparatively brief, they had learned to be wary of trusting blindly. 

“You probably won’t believe us,” Huey said, breaking the silence at last. “No one else has. But we trust you.” He waited to receive nods of acquiesce from his brothers before continuing. “Our uncle was kidnapped. He received a strange letter in the mail and two days later he was stuffing us in the car in the middle of the night. We got into an accident. When we woke up he was just...gone.”

A strange expression settled on Gosalyn’s face, equal parts perturbed and incredulous. 

“You don’t believe us,” Louie said flatly. 

“You kidding?” she replied. “My grandpa was murdered by his lab partner and nobody has taken me seriously. I’m probably the only person who _could_ believe you.”

“So you see a weird girl and your first thought is that she must be in a cult?”

Dewey rolls his eyes as Huey and Louie snicker. “It is when she disappears into thin air,” he replies stubbornly. 

It’s the following Sunday morning that Mrs. Cavanaugh suggests a picnic at the park, and the boys jump at the chance to escape the brownstone and the cacophony outside it. Here, at least, the sounds of the city are muffled and there’s no sense of urgency beyond what they carry with them. 

Gosalyn raises her hands as a gesture of peace. “Fine, I won’t dunk on your crazy theories anymore. Probably. You said something about Scrooge McDuck, Hubbard?”

After two weeks, Huey doesn’t even dignify the nickname with a response. Unlike so many who simply don't bother remembering their names (as he always feared had been the case with Uncle Gladstone), Gosalyn knows perfectly well what each of them are called. She just likes getting a rise out of them. 

“Yes,” Huey responds. “He’s our only lead. Uncle Donald was taking us to him before the accident. He said that Scrooge McDuck...owed him for something.”

Gosalyn shakes her head slowly. “How does your uncle even know the richest duck in the world? I mean, he’s _the richest duck in the world.” _

“Now you know how we feel,” Louie says. “We have no idea how they know each other. But Scrooge McDuck can tell us.”

“He might even know who would want to kidnap Uncle Donald!” Dewey adds eagerly. “I mean, he used to deal with crazy, dangerous people all the time, right? Before he got all lame?”

Huey nods. “The only problem is getting to McDuck Mansion. If we were still in Duckburg that’d be one thing, but we’d need to take a-a bus or a taxi to get there from St. Canard. And we can’t do _ that _because—”

“Because we’re broke,” Louie says, letting out a frustrated sigh.

Gosalyn laughs. “Wait,” she says, “all you need is _ money? _ Geez, you could’ve just said so.”

Dewey chuckles. “What, are you some sort of secret millionaire and forgot to mention it?”

“If I was a millionaire, I’d be living all alone in a huge mansion because I’d be so rich they wouldn’t be able to put me in a foster home,” she replies, her tone casual but eyes hard. She brushes grass off the seat of her pants as she stands up. “Just hold tight, ladies. I’ll get your money.”

“Um,” Huey says, as all three of them watch Gosalyn turn around and walk toward one of the busy footpaths cutting through the park. “What is she doing?”

She crosses the wide path, brushing past a few businessmen speaking loudly into their phones, some parents pushing strollers, and waits to let some joggers pass before reaching the water fountain on the other side. After taking a few sips she ambles back, expertly maneuvering around pedestrians once more. She plops down on the grass with a satisfied smirk that widens in the face of their obvious confusion.

“I think this should just about cover bus fare to Duckburg,” Gosalyn says, and pulls seven wallets out of the pockets of her hoodie. 

Huey sputters, Louie gapes, and Dewey exclaims, “Whoa-ho ho!”

“Did you just steal those?!” Huey hisses, looking wildly over his shoulders. 

“No, Hubcap, they magically appeared in my pockets,” Gosalyn replies dryly, dropping the wallets onto the grass. 

Louie immediately starts rifling through them. “Fifteen, thirty, fifty,” he counts off, with a grin that stretches with every added bill. “You, my friend, are a master. Where’d you learn how to do that?”

Gosalyn shrugs with a self-satisfied smirk as she pockets the empty wallets. “Lotsa time to practice, Lubert. The main thing they don’t tell you about being a foster kid? How boring it can get.”

“We can’t use that money,” Huey says. “It’s _ stolen _. Those people—”

“Were walking around with barely more than fifteen bucks in their wallets, and IDs and credit cards that can be replaced,” Gosalyn interrupts firmly. “We’re inconveniencing them. You guys are trying to save your family. It’s no contest.”

“But—”

“Huey,” Dewey says quietly. “This is our best chance at finding Uncle Donald. There’s no other way we can get that money.”

Huey exhales shakily, his shoulders slumping. “Uncle Donald would be so disappointed,” he murmurs. 

“Better disappointed than dead,” Louie says bluntly as he gathers the cash in his sweatshirt pocket. 

It puts an end to the matter, which Huey acknowledges with a grudging nod. He looks back over at Gosalyn. “It is a lot of money, though, when you put it all together. Definitely more than a round trip costs, even for all three of us.”

Gosalyn shrugs. “You always want a little extra just in case. People aren’t always what you expect them to be. Especially rich ones. Plus, you guys can buy food that you don’t have to fight someone over.”

“We could get Hamburger Hippo,” Dewey gushes. “We haven’t had that in forever.”

_ “Hippo, _ Deuteronomy, really?” Gosalyn snarks. “We have _got_ to expand your culinary pallet.”

“Why don’t you come with us, Gosalyn?” Huey says in a rush. 

She goes very still. “What?” 

Dewey and Louie are smiling now. 

“Yeah,” Dewey encourages. “You’re super scary and cool and you’ve helped us a lot. And once we get Uncle Donald back, I’m sure he’d adopt you too!”

“Plus,” Louie adds slyly. “We’re going to _ Scrooge McDuck’s _ mansion. The guy swims in money, he probably has diamonds sitting in fruit bowls instead of apples and oranges. You can’t tell me you don’t want a piece of that action.”

Gosalyn smiles, small and incredulous. “You guys are serious.”

“Of course we’re serious,” Huey replies. “Expect for the part about stealing from Scrooge McDuck, really, Louie?" He looks back at Gosalyn, expression earnest. "We’d be happy to have you as part of our family.”

She ducks her head and wipes at the corner of her glassy eye with the back of her hand. “Wow. Um. Thanks, you guys. That-that means a lot. But uh,” When she looks back up, her eyes are red but her features resolute. “Don’t take it the wrong way when I say I can’t accept.”

“What?” Dewey exclaims. “Why not?”

“Was it something Dewey did?” Louie asks. 

_“Hey!”_

Gosalyn shakes her head, giggling. “No, no it’s not that. You guys have got this big quest to find your uncle, which is awesome, but I’ve gotta stay in St. Canard. You could say I’ve got a quest of my own.” 

“Quest? Is this about your grandpa?” Huey asks worriedly. “We could help—”

“You three need to get to Duckburg,” Gosalyn interrupts wryly. “When everything shakes out, you know where to find me. I’m not going anywhere.” She punches Huey’s arm gently, her smile as soft as they’ve ever seen it. 

Huey blinks back tears through sheer determination. “Thank you,” he says, as he scoots closer to Gosalyn and wraps his arms around her despite the way she stiffens at the first sight of contact. 

“Woah, hey, I don’t really do...hugging,” she says, as Louie joins the embrace. Dewey throws himself into the group, sending them toppling onto the grass with a startled burst of laughter. 

“Good luck in Duckburg,” she says breathlessly. “You losers are gonna need it.” 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tank will eventually be adopted by the Muddlefoots and Gosalyn & co. will never hear from him again


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I cranked this bad boy out in 2 days in a flash of inspiration! Sorry for the long wait and thanks to everyone for sticking around!

While the road winding up Killmotor Hill is desolate and seemingly endless, it’s mystifying to watch Duckburg fall away beneath them. With every step they climb higher and familiar city streets shrink, becoming a living, glimmering tapestry before their eyes, stretching out far into the horizon. The bay is swiftly growing dark save for an outstretched arm of harsh orange as the sun sinks beneath the waves. Across the water St. Canard is already agleam, it’s clusters of imposing skyscrapers blotting out the parts of the city where the everyday people live, where  _ they  _ had lived just earlier today. 

Four hours, three buses, and one stop at Hamburger Hippo later, they are closer to their goal than they have ever been. That much closer to finding Uncle Donald. 

Despite the lingering July heat, each of them has taken great care to don their warmest jackets, unsure when, if ever, they’ll return to the Cavanaughs’ home. They didn’t have much in the way of personal belongings before being shuffled between various homes where other kids had little to no compunctions about rifling through another person’s belongings. They’ve since learned to fiercely guard what little they have; cell phones, lucky hoodies, and money especially. 

Uncle Donald had tried to shield them from the worst of his financial troubles, but he couldn’t protect them from all of it. Clothes weren’t given away if they tore or wore thin; he sat them down and taught them how to sew. Toys were bought secondhand and their laptop and television set were ancient, scavenged from garage sales over the years. 

Contrary to the opinions of their crueler classmates who looked at the poorer quality of their clothes and their outdated phones and concluded they could only be living under a bridge, their home had only ever meant safety and warmth. They never went hungry, even if it meant that on occasion too many dinners in a row consisted of inexpensive hot dogs. The power went out more often due to Uncle Donald’s bad luck than his inability to pay the bill. 

If anything, growing up the way they did had prepared them to fend for themselves after Uncle Donald was taken. If they’d been some spoiled little rich kids used to living easy, why, they wouldn’t have lasted a day in the system. Huey in particular is convinced that they would have been separated at once if Uncle Donald hadn’t imparted on them his most important lesson, after the lesson on how to fix virtually anything with duck tape: family always helps family. 

With Uncle Donald gone, it’s Huey’s responsibility to do whatever it takes to protect his family. 

The sun continues to sink the higher they rose, and the manor atop the hill still looks as far away as ever. None of them have spoken much since they got off at the final bus stop and looked up to see the mountain looming over them, bigger and more imposing than anything they’ve ever seen. And it’s not like they’d never driven past Killmotor Hill before or could’ve forgotten its significance—as if anybody in Duckburg could. Home of the richest duck in the world; sometimes the title alone is enough to boggle Huey’s mind. 

On clear nights, the lights of McDuck Mansion could sometimes be seen from the deck of the houseboat. They might as well have been looking at another planet for how far out of their reach that sort of lifestyle was. Not that long ago, living in a mansion with their every whim catered to and every resource at their disposal had been everything they ever wanted. 

Safe to say their priorities have changed. 

Nonetheless, they all have the same thing on their mind as they continue up the infamous Killmotor Hill, and as always Dewey is the first to voice it. 

“What do you think Scrooge McDuck’s like?” he turns around as he asks, walking backward up the road. 

Huey moves to Dewey’s side to be close enough to catch him when he inevitably trips. “I don’t know,” he replies thoughtfully. “Based on my research there are conflicting reports, though they are a little dated. You know he’s been a bit of a recluse for a while.”

“Ooh, what reports?” Dewey enthuses. 

Huey rolls his eyes goodnaturedly. “Well, I mean, we all know how he used to go on adventures. Emphasis on ‘used to’.”

“Yeah!” Dewey punches and kicks at the air without bothering to stop walking. “Like-like how he defeated a rock giant and carved a statue of himself out of its leg!” He trips backward in his carelessness, letting out a yelp. Having been waiting for this exact moment, Huey catches him easily by the arm and turns him to face forward. Dewey clears his throat in embarrassment as Huey and Louie snicker behind his back. “I, uh, I meant to do that.” 

“What about you?” Huey asks, still laughing a little as he turns to Louie. “The rumors about Scrooge McDuck swimming in his own money still haven’t been disproven, you know.”

Louie’s smile fades away, leaving an expression that’s almost bitter. He stuffs his hands into the pocket of his hoodie. “If the rumors are true then I guess McDuck isn’t as smart as I thought he was. What kind of person just lets that much money sit around? Money’s meant to be spent and if he’s not gonna do that he might as well give it to people who will.”

Huey and Dewey’s own amusement falters, and as they continue walking all three of them fall silent again. 

“Imagine if we  _ did  _ have that much money though,” Dewey says quietly, almost breathless with wonder. “Or like even a tiny, tiny piece of it!”

“We’d buy a big house, like Gosalyn,” Louie says, a smile tugging at his beak. 

“We could live next door to each other!” 

Louie nods at Huey. “You could afford the newest version of the Junior Woodchuck Guidebook.” 

Huey reaches up to his hat, a bittersweet look crossing his face. “I have heard that the fourteenth edition has an extended section on Mesopotamian crop rotation.” 

“Dewey could afford to fight a rock giant himself, and pay for his hospital bills when it stomps him into the ground,” Louie adds with growing fervor, flapping a hand in Dewey’s direction. 

“Yeah!” Dewey exclaims. “Wait, what?”

“And I could hire a hundred private detectives to find Uncle Donald,” Louie plows on like he didn’t hear him; literally walking past his brothers when they immediately freeze at his words. “And they’d-they’d find him and then Uncle Donald wouldn’t have to work another day in his life, he could retire and live on the houseboat in our Olympic-sized pool and never worry about money again.”

His voice is breaking by the end of his rant, and he comes to a stop a few feet ahead of his brothers. Louie doesn’t turn to face them, but his hunched shoulders tremble and he sniffles as he swipes his sleeve across his beak. 

Huey approaches him first, wrapping an arm around his shoulders. “Scrooge McDuck has more than enough money to make that happen,” he assures Louie confidently. “Remember, he’s the one Uncle Donald was bringing us to in the first place! We’re finally where we’re supposed to be.”

“Plus, we’ll finally know why  _ our  _ Uncle Donald knows  _ the  _ Scrooge McDuck!” Dewey insists, tugging on Louie’s arm. “Ooh, maybe Uncle Donald saved his life once on one of his crazy adventures and now he owes Uncle Donald a life debt!” 

Louie scoffs, grinning. “Yeah, right. You’re crazy if you think boring Uncle Donald would ever go on an adventure.” 

All three of them laugh quietly. 

“Remember when we tried to take the houseboat to Cape Suzette and he grounded us for a month?” Dewey asks. 

Huey covers his eyes with a groan.  _ “After _ making us wait in that terrible lobby for hours while he failed his job interview.”

Louie snorts, wiping away tears with the heel of his palm. “Wasn’t it some dumb job for Glomgold Industries? That guy’s face was plastered  _ everywhere _ .”

They break into peals of laughter, arms around each other holding them up. Only a few months ago they would have looked back on such memories with annoyance and not a trace of fondness. Now, it’s a struggle to fend off the grief they bring. 

“C’mon, we’re almost there!” Dewey pulls away to pronounce with fierce determination. He marches up the road, looking back at his brothers instead of facing forward. “We’ll get Scrooge McDuck off his rich butt, get him to help us find Uncle Donald, and he’ll be so impressed with our mad skillz—yes, skills with a ‘z!’—that we’ll singlehandedly get him to start adventuring again—”

“Hey! Dewey, wait, watch where you’re going!” Huey shouts as he and Louie hurry to catch up to him. 

“Buh?” Dewey replies, facing forward just in time to walk straight into a row of solid metal bars with a  _ clang _ . He falls backward with a groan, rubbing his forehead. 

Behind him, Huey and Louie trail to a stop. 

“Whoa,” the latter murmurs. 

Still lying on the ground, Dewey’s beak falls open. “Guys? We’re here.” 

At long last the gates of McDuck Manor loom over them, spindly and stark black against the mauve of the darkening twilight sky. On the crest of the hill just beyond, the windows of the manor gleam gold. 

After nearly a full minute of uninterrupted gawking, Huey is the first to break the spell. He helps Dewey back to his feet before scrutinizing the gate with a keen Junior Woodchuck eye. 

“Okay,” he says, clapping his hands together. “There’s an intercom right here. How should we introduce ourselves?”

Dewey and Louie look at him like he’s lost his mind. 

“Have you lost your mind?” Dewey demands. “They don’t know who we are! There’s no way they’ll just let us in, no matter what we say.”

“But, the intercom,” Huey argues weakly. “It’s sole purpose is for guests to announce themselves.”

Louie lazily rolls his head back to take in the sheer scale of Killmotor Hill and the mansion atop it. “Well we’re not exactly guests, are we?” he says. “This is the richest duck in the world we’re talking about, he probably gets all sorts of weirdos coming up to his door asking for handouts. He’ll just think we’re one of them. We’re gonna have to be sneaky about this.” He steps right up to the gates and lightly rattles the bars. “It isn’t too high. We could climb it.”

Huey gasps, aghast, while Dewey begins to bounce excitedly in place. “Are you suggesting we break in?” they both demand with dramatically dissimilar inflections. 

“Only at first!” Louie says, raising his hands placatingly. “Once we find McDuck and explain what happened to Uncle Donald he won’t call the cops on us. Y’know, hopefully.”

“If we’re lucky!” Huey hisses, crossing his arms over his chest. “I don’t like the idea of breaking into the mansion of the richest duck in the world.”

“I do!” Dewey says. He bounds over to Louie’s side. “Here, boost me up! Let’s get this break-in started.”

Louie crouches to give him a leg up. Once Dewey manages to get a sturdy hold on the fence, Louie looks back at Huey hovering by the intercom. “You know we can’t stop now, Hue,” he says. “Not when we’ve already come this far.”

“When you think about it, breaking and entering isn’t so bad,” Dewey adds, swinging back and forth on the fence. “Gosalyn stole our bus fare, we ran away. They’re probably looking for us back in St. Canard as we speak.”

“Exactly,” Louie insists. “As bad as it looks, Uncle Donald would do a thousand times as much to get any of us back. We’ve gotta try to do the same for him.”

Huey averts his eyes from his brothers’ twin imploring expressions. He knows that if they do this there'll be no turning back; they might get in trouble for the rest, but this is breaking the law. Funny enough, the notion doesn’t frighten him as much as it might once have. He knows there are worse things to fear. 

“Well,” Huey says, rubbing his arm with a hesitant smile, “the circumstances might be suspect, but there  _ is  _ a Junior Woodchuck stealthiness badge I’ve been eyeing.” 

His brothers break into enthusiastic cheers. 

Louie holds his arm out for a fistbump. “Hooray for loopholes!” 

“Let’s commit a felony!” Dewey chants before nearly losing his grip on the fence.

Huey shushes them and smacks Louie’s hand away. “Do you understand what stealth  _ means? _ I’m not winning any badges this way.” 

“You’re winning at something alright.” Louie grins even as he rubs the back of his stinging hand. “Now get over here and give me a boost.”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


The grounds surrounding McDuck Manor are tree laden and dark. Though they’re closer now than ever, the lights within the grand, Scottish mansion seem far enough to be otherworldly. With little more than weak moonlight to guide them, Huey uses the flashlight setting on his phone, pointed down at the ground to avoid their being spotted prematurely. They walk in single file, Huey in the lead and his brothers following behind, tethered by their clasped hands. 

It’s almost deathly quiet as they weave their way through the trees, too high for the sounds of cars or the city itself to reach them. Instead, leaves crunch under their feet and bushes rustle, putting them all on edge. A bird cries out sharply from somewhere in the dark, making Dewey and Louie jump. Huey just tilts his head to the side. 

“That sounded like a  _ Pavo muticus,” _ he whispers thoughtfully. 

“Uh huh,” Louie replies, gaze darting around blindly in the dark. “Is that some sort of flesh eating bird that McDuck could be using to guard this place?”

Huey chuckles quietly. “I sure hope not! While they’re omnivores, the green peafowl shouldn’t be eating anything bigger than a rat.”

“Wait a minute,” Dewey mutters, narrowing his eyes. “Were you just using the scary name for  _ peacock?” _

“I used the  _ Latin  _ name because I don’t know if the peafowl is male or female,” Huey replies with a sniff. 

“Hey.” Louie shoves Dewey who in turn bumps into Huey. “If we’re not being stalked by a killer bird can we go back to sneaking around?”

Huey nods, the movement just barely visible in the glow his cell phone provides. “Good idea,” he whispers. 

They press on through the dark, the silhouette of McDuck Manor growing steadily larger. All at once, the treeline comes to an abrupt end, more than twenty-five feet of grass in between them and the western side of the manor. The trees are far more scattered here, and far less likely to provide cover if someone inside the manor so much as looks out the window at the right time. 

Huey lets go of Dewey’s hand in order to pace the edge of the treeline. 

“If we go out there we’d be completely exposed,” he mutters to himself, walking with a hand raised to his chin. “They might think we’re burglars or-or assassins, or—”

Louie snorts. “Assassins?” he repeats blithely. 

“This is the home of _ Scrooge McDuck _ we’re talking about!” Huey hisses as loudly as he dares. “I don’t want to take any unnecessary risks that could get us hurt or-or arrested or separated.” 

“They’d probably already arrest us for trespassing,” Dewey pipes up helpfully, raising his hand. 

Huey drags his hands down his face. “Are you guys sure we can’t just knock and explain everything?” Though partially obscured from their vantage point, the cool blue moonlight reflects off the marble steps to the front door, a heavenly and uncomplicated option to Huey’s eyes. 

“You know we can’t do that,” Louie snaps. “We have to give McDuck no choice  _ but  _ to listen to us. If we knock and get one of his hundred butlers we’ll never get that chance to even talk to him. Look at us! We’re just a couple grubby kids who look like they’ve been  _ living  _ out here. They’ll call the cops on us like  _ that _ ,” he says with a snap of his fingers. 

Huey’s fists tremble at his sides, the infamous Duck temper that Uncle Donald had talked him through so many times before churning inside him now. He’s furious because Louie’s right and he knows it; he knows that despite how far they’ve come, one little misstep and they’ll end up worse than they were at the start. 

“Soooo,” Dewey says in the wake of their lengthening silence, “we’re Dewey-ing it then? Our super awesome break-in plan?” 

Huey exhales heavily, turning to look at the mansion. “I guess we have no choice. But we have to be smart about this. We have to plan out exactly what we’re going to say when we find someone. Or, far more likely, when someone finds  _ us.” _

“Yeah, yeah, leave the talking to me,” Louie replies flippantly, waving a hand. “The real problem is how we’re gonna get inside. This place is like a fortress.”

Huey stalks along the periphery, his brothers trailing behind. He scowls up at the manor. “A fortress is right. It’s not like we’re just going to find a conveniently open window.”

“Hey look!” Dewey says, pointing up. “An open window!” 

“You’ve gotta be kidding me!” 

After a moment of frantic searching, Dewey is proven right. One of the third story windows on the far western side of the manor is not only aglow, but ajar. The wall around it is darkened by climbing vines and just beneath the window frame lurks a tall maple tree (or,  Acer Griseum, as Huey is quick to inform his brothers). 

“We’ve climbed trees in the park that were way taller than that,” Dewey says confidently.  _ And gave Uncle Donald a heart attack every time,  _ goes unsaid. 

Huey sighs. “I guess it doesn’t technically count as breaking and entering if we’re just doing the entering part? Maybe?”

“That’s the spirit, Hubert,” Louie says, clapping him on the shoulder. 

Climbing the tree does prove as easy as they expect, though it’s slow-going in the dark. None of them want to risk using their phone flashlight, lest its wildly swinging beam get the attention of someone in the manor. The moonlight is just barely bright enough to guide them, and Huey goes first to help his brothers find handholds. 

After several minutes, they find themselves beneath the window sill. 

Huey holds a finger up to his bill, asking for silence. “We don’t know if someone’s inside,” he whispers. 

“I’ll check!” Dewey insists, too loud to be a proper whisper. He jostles to poke his head in first despite Huey and Louie’s hushed protests. But he overbalances in his eagerness, and practically falls through the window instead. 

He looks around quickly as his brothers panic behind him. The room is brightly lit and the walls are lined with bookcases. There’s a ladder going up into the ceiling and there a set of closed doors on the other side of the room. Most importantly, it’s empty. 

“All clear, boys,” Dewey announces in a loud whisper, wiggling the rest of the way over the window sill. He falls face first but the carpet is soft and in a moment he’s back on his feet. 

Huey and Louie follow him through, and they pause a few seconds to take in the room in full. 

“I can’t believe it,” Huey murmurs, flocking to the overflowing bookcases. “We’re inside McDuck Manor.”

“Uh, does McDuck have a kid or something?” Louie says. He scrutinizes an elaborate tea party set up that has stuffed animals sitting at the small table. There are even doilies beneath the teacups. 

Huey starts paying more attention to the room’s contents aside from the books. “Oh,” he says, startled, “you might be right.”

There are model planes, glow-in-the-dark stars and moons hanging from the ceiling and more stuffed animals scattered around the room. There are also  _ weapons _ , and lots of them. A globe with thumbtacks and a sword sticking out of it, spears displayed on the wall and posters impaled by daggers; the room’s mix of cute and deadly is jarring. 

Dewey fiddles with the arrow pinning a Quackypatch doll to the wall and chuckles weakly. “I don’t think I want to meet this kid.”

“With any luck we won’t have to,” Louie mutters. He wanders by a pulldown map of the world against the far wall. He might have continued on if the post-its and newspaper clipping on the floor beneath it hadn’t caught his attention. He picks up the newspaper clipping and reads the headline:  _ McDuck Hangs Up His Spats.  _ It’s dated over a decade ago. Curious now, he tugs the map away from the wall and discovers a red-yarn zigzagging conspiracy board the likes of which he’s only seen on television. 

Or at least he finds the remains of one. 

There are large empty patches on the corkboard where thumbtacks and red string hang desolate, some clinging to scraps where the paper was ripped away. The information that remains hardly paints a cohesive picture. There’s a newspaper article about sky pirates, post-it notes with nonsensical statements written on them in a quick hand:  _ friend or F.O.W.L., Netherworld War II.  _ Scattered among what might be a list of Beagle Boys names are more articles about Scrooge McDuck. 

“What’re you looking at?” Dewey asks, joining Louie underneath the map. His eyes go wide. “Whoa.”

“Yeah,” Louie says with a nod. 

“Uh, Huey, take a look at this,” Dewey calls. 

He wanders over from where he was nervously eyeing the doors. “I don’t think we should linger here too long,” Huey’s saying until he sees the board. “Whoa.”

_ “Yeah,” _ Louie says. 

Huey’s brow furrows as he examines the board more closely. “This is...weird.”

“You’re telling me,” Dewey replies. 

“There’s so much information missing,” Huey mumbles to himself. “What did they do with it? And why did they remove it in the first place?” 

“Who cares!” Louie hisses. “We need to get out of here and find Scrooge McDuck before we get thrown out.”

Huey straightens with determination. “You’re right,” he says. He lets the map fall back over the gutted conspiracy board. “But how are we going to go about this? We have no idea what the layout of the mansion is like, where Scrooge McDuck might even be—”

“Wait,” Dewey blurts, slapping a hand over Huey’s beak to close it which is promptly slapped down. “No, no, listen!” he insists. 

Huey and Louie oblige him by falling silent, and that’s when they hear it: footsteps. 

“Oh crap,” Louie mutters. His head swivels side to side wildly in search of a place to hide. “Crap, crap, crap.”

Huey grabs his brothers by the shoulders. “The ladder,” he whispers emphatically. 

The footsteps stop at the door, and a knock chills them to the bone. 

“Webbigail?” a deep feminine voice calls in a smooth British accent. “Webby, dear, what’s all that noise?”

The door handle rattles as Huey shoves Dewey and Louie to the ladder, and they all freeze, certain that they’ve been discovered. But the door doesn’t open. 

“Webbigail, why is the door locked?” the woman asks. Her voice begins to harden. 

“When did you lock the door?” Louie whispers at Dewey.

He throws his hands up in front of him. “I didn’t!”

“Who cares!” Huey says. “Maybe if we’re quiet for two seconds she’ll go away!”

Louie’s hand makes contact with the nearest wooden rung of the ladder and the room abruptly goes dark. They clamor around blindly. 

“What the-did the power just go out?” Dewey exclaims. 

Huey shushes them desperately. “We’re going to be so much trouble.”

A voice emerges from the darkness. “You don’t know the half of it.”

They hear a rope snap and a net descends over them, trapping them beneath it. They cry out, thrashing beneath it, but the net must be weighted because it doesn’t budge an inch. 

Outside the door, the woman bellows,  _ “Webbigail!”  _ There’s the sound of wood crunching and splintering before the door is thrown open with a bang, slamming into the adjacent wall. Light from the hallway spills into the room, silhouetting the tall, broad shouldered woman in the doorway. 

“Please let us go!” Huey cries. “I promise we’re not here to rob you or Mr. McDuck or—”

“Don’t tell her that!” Dewey shouts. 

“Well it’s true!”

“Shut up, you guys, shut up—you’ve gotta help us, lady, there’s a crazy person in here,” Louie pleads. 

The woman flips on the lightswitch, and the boys flinch in the sudden brightness. In the light they see that the woman is steely-haired, wearing a purple cardigan and a white apron. Her expression is deadpan. 

“Webbigail,” she says again, expectantly this time. 

The terrifying voice from the darkness speaks up. “Intruders apprehended, Granny!” 

The boys struggle against the net to turn and follow the source and gape at what they find. Standing behind the ladder is a girl no older than they are in a pink skirt and purple sweater vest, smiling triumphantly. 

“How did she get in?” Dewey whispers. “The door was locked!”

“Well?” the older woman asks sharply, making them all flinch again. “What do you boys have to say for yourselves? I have half a mind to contact the authorities right this very minute.”

“No, please don’t call the police!” Huey begs at once, his mind racing in blind panic. His brothers join him in chorus. 

“Please, please don’t!”

“Huey’s right, we’re not here to steal anything!”

She folds her arms over her chest. “You know that breaking and entering is a serious offense, don’t you?” 

“Well, technically we didn’t break anything,” Dewey wheedles. “We climbed in through an open window.” In tandem, Louie and Huey elbow him in the side. “Hey- _ ow!” _

The woman’s eyes widen at this, and she looks up sharply over their heads at her supposed granddaughter. But within seconds her ire lands squarely back on them. “Either way,” she says shortly, “you three are in serious trouble. I hope whatever dare or compensation you received was worth it.”

“You don’t understand!” Huey says, struggling against the net in an attempt to stand. “We’re-we’re not just some stupid kids! I’m sorry we broke in, ma’am, but we’re here because we  _ need  _ to see Scrooge McDuck.”

If anything, the woman somehow manages to look even less amused. “Mr. McDuck is a very busy man who often cannot make time for visiting dignitaries, much less juvenile delinquents who chose to break into his home.” 

“It’s not like that!” Dewey insists. 

“He knows our uncle,” Louie shouts with tears in his eyes and clogging his throat. He’s never been good at confrontation, especially when he knows he doesn’t have the upper hand, but he can feel the woman’s patience running out like grains of sand in an hourglass and there’s no time for subterfuge. “Donald Duck! His name’s Donald Duck!” 

The woman’s eyes go round with shock behind her glasses. Within a blink she’s composed herself, though her voice still rings with incredulity. “You’re Donald’s children?” she says quietly. While it doesn’t seem like she’s genuinely asking, they nod anyway. Her softening expression abruptly hardens once more and her eyes go narrow. “Prove it.”

The boys sputter. 

“What like a blood test?” Dewey cries. 

Huey stammers. “We-we have photos, tons of photos of all four of us on the houseboat, on-on trips, even some baby pictures.”

Louie meets her penetrating stare with a glare of his own, blinking away tears. “We’re only here because Uncle Donald isn’t,” he says levelly. “We need McDuck’s help to find him.” 

Alarm flickers over the woman’s face and she uncrosses her arms. She moves forward, bending down to grab the edge of the net still trapping them. “Watch your fingers,” she warns, before yanking it up, over their heads and dropping it to the side. 

The boys stand shakily, eying the girl, Webbigail, and her grandmother with uncertainty. The latter further surprises them by kneeling to be eye level with them. 

“To make things clear, you’re saying that Donald Duck is missing?” she asks, her voice the gentlest they’ve heard it. Behind them, Webbigail gasps. 

“Y-yes,” Huey answers. 

“For how long?”

Huey breathes in shakily. Dewey takes his hand. “Five months next Tuesday,” he says with a stubborn tilt to his chin in an effort to keep tears at bay. 

The woman looks utterly grave. “I’m sorry for the rough welcome. Our policy toward uninvited guests leans more toward ‘better safe than sorry,’ as I’m sure you can understand,” she says. “I’m Bentina Beakley. The young lady who trapped you under a net is my granddaughter.”

They turn around and the girl waves at them with a nervous smile on her face that’s as bizarrely at odds with her actions as this dichotomous bedroom is. “Hi,” she says, “I’m Webby.”

The boys introduce themselves in turn and Mrs. Beakley nods, rising to her feet. Her smile should look strange on her severe face, but even Louie finds it comforting. “It’s a pleasure to meet you three, though I wish it weren’t under such circumstances. I’ll take you to Mr. McDuck right away.” 

It takes a few seconds for her words to sink in, but when they do, all three of them gasp, slack-jawed by how swiftly their luck has turned. Dewey grabs Huey by the front of his shirt and tugs on it in overwhelming excitement and Huey keeps starting and stopping sentences, unable to find the words. Waving a hand blindly, he grabs Louie’s arm and tightly grips his hand. Louie, incredulous, clutches back at him. 

Mrs. Beakley turns to the door, still hanging ajar. Then she stops and returns to face them. “What did your uncle tell you about Mr. McDuck?” she asks after a pause that can’t have lasted more than a second. But Louie notices, and thinks it a strange question to ask right at this moment. 

“Just-just that he knew Mr. McDuck,” Huey answers right away, but then he hesitates too. “Uncle Donald said that...Mr. McDuck  _ owed  _ him.” 

She scoffs, but it’s a sound of approval. “Quite right,” she says, and there’s a weight to her words none of the boys could hope to decipher. Mrs. Beakley scrutinizes them with a critical eye. “If I asked you to wait here, I suppose you would immediately disobey me?” 

“Well,” Huey starts to say. 

“Oh, we’d be long gone,” Dewey replies. “Dew-finitely.” 

Mrs. Beakley huffs, but the slight curl of her beak betrays her amusement. “I thought as much. Follow me, then. You too, Webby.”

“Yes, Granny,” she says, looking back at the boys with an inscrutable expression as she walks past them to follow Mrs. Beakley out the door. 

  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am *very* excited to explore the dynamics of HDL who have learned to fend for themselves in a very real way, completely outside of adventure! 
> 
> Next chapter: what has Scrooge been up to? And more importantly, what's Webby been up to? 
> 
> Be sure to comment! :D


	5. Chapter 5

Scrooge McDuck is not fond of the man he’s become. 

His days have long since begun to bleed into one another, indistinguishable from one day to the next, the end result being a dull miasma he has learned to slog through. He wakes, reads the paper over a cup of tea, McQuack drives him to his downtown office, and his meetings go on for as long as they need to. He summons McQuack when the meetings are through, be it noon or eight in the evening, and returns home to whatever meal Bentina had seen fit to put on his plate, his old friend giving him the stink eye until he finishes at least half. Then he retires to bed and stares at the ceiling until sleep claims him. 

The next day is much of the same, on and on, as it has been for the last two years. 

Though really, it’s not as incredibly dull as he makes it out to be. Scrooge has always been a bit of a dramatic sort, but being one hundred and fifty years old he likes to think he’s earned it sometimes. It’s true that the days are a slog to get through but he’s learned to appreciate the simple pleasures of a perfectly brewed cup of tea, the sight of a cloudless, clear blue sky, and waking without pain. It’s the way he faced every new day on the Mississippi, on Copper Hill, in the Klondike and the countless other equally beautiful and terrible places his adventures have taken him, where the nearly identical days could only be told apart by the dangers he encountered. 

Danger doesn’t come for Scrooge McDuck these days. Though to be fair, neither does he seek it out. 

Scrooge can look back on his life in a way few mortal beings are capable of. His memory spans more than a century; he has witnessed the fall of entire nations, regime changes that spanned decades, fought and befriended the magical and mystical and the entirely mortal. So many of the people he used to know have died, faded into obscurity, their legacies known only to him. Uncle Angus, Jabiru the wiseman, Mr. Mackenzie, dear Hortense and steadfast Quackmore. As required by his long life, Scrooge is no stranger to loss. 

But no death is the same as another, and it’s only a matter of time before someone is ripped from his life and they take a piece of himself with them. 

Three years after he loses the Spear of Selene’s signal, he starts to gather anything that reminds him of Della and hides it away. He’s still in denial then, despite the years of uninterrupted silence, the search and rescue ships that continue to return empty-handed. The sight of her, of any sign of her presence, _ hurts _. More than he can remember anything hurting— until the full devastation of his failure comes crashing down on him four years later as the Buzzards drag him away from the radio room. 

So Scrooge sweeps through the mansion, gathers every photo, every discarded sword or sweater, and locks it away. As the years fade by and the sound of static lengthens, imprinted on his heart, he moves some of her things to the memorial he’s constructed deep in the archives. The rest go to the Other Bin, where he knows Bentina’s curious bairn will not stumble upon them. He hides or erases anything there was to know about Della in the hopes that the memory of her smiling face will stop tormenting him. 

It is not easy to bottle up that pain, to strangle the vicious gnawing creature that is his guilt and cram it in a lockbox never to see the light of day. But Scrooge has years of experience practicing willful ignorance of the things that hurt him, whether it’s a broken leg in Gumption or Della condemned to death among the stars. 

In Gumption, he sets his own broken leg with a pickaxe for a splint and goes right back to digging, never losing sight of his goal, his gold. There is no time for pain, no money to pay for a doctor; it is faster to do it himself, to do it alone. 

Here, now, he throws himself headfirst into his work, involving himself in the nitty-gritty of his business in a way he hasn’t in years. He negotiates mergers and contracts like he used to, buys and sells and steers McDuck Industries out of the red and into the light. His tightfisted board of directors tut and shake their heads, give him another list of divisions to cut, and he can’t even blame them. 

A decade ago (eleven years, to be precise) Scrooge cost his company obscene amounts of capital in a long, desperate bid to rescue his niece that left him with nothing but a drained Money Bin and an empty mansion. Eleven years ago, Donald turned away from him in grief and betrayal, his fury beyond the capacity for words. Scrooge had understood all the same: he was not welcome in the lives of Della’s children. 

It takes time, years made hazy by desperation and despair that seem to pass by in both a blink and an aeon, but Scrooge sets the break himself and goes back to work, back to living. Living, in the most basic definition of the word. 

Scrooge McDuck breathes, he eats and sleeps and relies more on his cane than he ever did before, and not a drop of wealth is added to his Money Bin.

  
  
  
  
  


Today had dragged on and on, far beyond what Scrooge suspects are the natural constraints of time. Then again, the interminable meetings his board of directors insist on usually tend to feel that way. 

The Buzzards called him in for another tedious row over the state of his Money Bin, because they apparently think they can chip away at his determination through sheer monotony. Even months later, they’re still trying to convince him to shut the Bin down completely. Nevermind that Scrooge has already agreed to their insistence of a reduced staff, reduced working hours, reduced maintenance cost. Far too many cuts that he has agreed to and won’t entertain further, at least not in relation to his Bin. 

He’s allowed them to gut his company, sack entire departments, bleed their investments dry to spare a handful of nickels here and half a million there. Scrooge knows it’s all in the name of recuperating the funds his folly had cost them, but it is still _ his _company despite what his board seems to think. The decisions are his to make, especially now that they can't dangle the threat of a boardroom coup over his head. 

After all that, even his ordinarily cathartic staring contest with Flinty ran long, especially after the first three attempts on his life. They grudgingly left it at a draw when one of Flintheart’s sharks lunged at them both, effectively ending the contest when they flinched in unison. They agreed to meet next week for their rematch, at the usual hour. 

By the time Launchpad drops him off at his front door, it’s late enough that the sky is on fire, the nearness of the sun to the horizon making the shadows thick and reaching. Molten light floods the foyer through the multitude of front facing windows, though Scrooge is alone to witness it. Bentina isn’t at the door to greet him, not an uncommon occurrence, especially when considering his tardiness. She’ll find him soon enough, or vice versa; there’s no need to disrupt her now. 

Dinner is a pan-seared salmon filet Bentina left for him in the fridge, wrapped in clear cellophane. He reheats it in the toaster oven, just one of the many newfangled devices Bentina has introduced to his kitchen and that he’s grudgingly mastered. He’d only come around to the microwave a decade ago, and he’s understandably wary of anything too new, no matter how much Bentina might tease him. 

Scrooge puts in the effort to actually savor his meal instead of eating quickly, tasting little, and putting Bentina’s hard work to waste. It’s easier to enjoy these simple pleasures when he elects to eat his dinner at the kitchen table rather than trek needlessly to the dining room, where its ridiculously long, polished table is nothing more than a pointed reminder of his solitude. It has the added benefit of sparing him the judgemental gazes of his parents’ portrait bearing over him. 

The sun has only just set by the time he finishes dinner, its descent made slow by the grip of a middling summer. The wine he had with dinner has eased some of the tension in his temples and the muscles of his shoulders, though he has no real desire to sleep yet. 

Rather than spending the next few hours staring at even more paperwork in his study, he retires to the quiet of his library, one of the rooms at the very center of his mansion. While not nearly as extensive as his archives at the Bin, his collection is a great deal more personal and valuable. First editions, many of them signed, line the shelves alongside historical compendiums that span centuries and continents, transcribed in countless languages. There are heavy leatherbound tomes on taxonomy and flora both long extinct or supernatural in origin, resplendent with exacting artistic depictions. However, nothing in his library is inherently magical; any enchanted books he has encountered on his travels are safely locked away in the Other Bin. 

Scrooge finds the library empty, which surprises him even now. For many years, it’s where he was most likely to encounter Webbigail, retreating to the same place of comforting solitude and silence as himself. Unfortunately, that isn’t to say they spent any time together here. His presence would often alarm her, Webbigail leaping a foot in the air the very moment he opened the door and fleeing out the window with apologies trailing behind her. On the rarer occasion that she was so engrossed in her reading she didn’t notice Scrooge at all, he was the one to turn awkward and nervous and would retreat from the doorway before he could frighten her again. 

He hasn’t seen Webbigail in his library for months now, and a pang accompanies the reminder as he flips on the lights in the cool, dark room. He supposes that even with Bentina’s mile-long overprotective streak, she must have friends somewhere that she spends her time with. In all the years she’s lived here, Scrooge has never quite known what to make of the lass, what little he sees of her. 

He certainly wasn’t fit company when she first came to live here, little more than a babe at the time if memory serves. It was during his bad years that Bentina asked if her granddaughter might join her at the mansion, the years that even now he scarcely remembers but for the churn of static in the radio room and the empty space beside him where Duckworth used to stand. Even in the depths of obsession Scrooge had known he needed the help; Bentina could have asked for a troupe of elephants to accompany her and he would’ve said yes. 

Scrooge shakes his head, the action shaking loose the cobwebs in his mind. Tonight is not a night to dwell in the past, he decides, and plucks a well-worn copy of _ The Count of Monte Quetzal _off a nearby bookshelf. A favorite of his as a boy, he won his original and since-lost copy in a card game after sneaking into a Glaswegian pub when he was just shy of thirteen. Scrooge makes himself comfortable in one of the library’s many plush armchairs, seated in front of the large, unlit fireplace. 

He opens the book to its first chapter, “The Arrival.”

_ On the 24th of February 1810, the look-out at Notre-Dame de la Garde signalled the three-master, the Pharaon from Smyrna, Trieste, and Naples. _

A knock at the door interrupts his concentration. 

Scrooge turns around in his chair as Bentina enters, surprising him when she doesn’t wait her customary few seconds. She surprises him again with the expression on her face, locked down tight in the way she only looks when something has truly caught her off guard.

“Mr. McDuck?” she says in a tone that makes him think she’s steeling herself to confess something has gone terribly wrong and it isn’t in her power to fix it. Scrooge sits up straighter. “You have some...visitors who are anxious to meet you.”

He sets his book aside, confusion putting a scowl on his face. “Visitors? At this hour?” 

Scrooge has never seen Bentina so reluctant to answer, and alarm suffuses him. What sort of visitors are these that she won’t say their names or speak candidly whatsoever? As he stands, on the brink of demanding what in the name of Cutty Stark is the _ matter _ , he realizes that she didn’t close the door behind her when the hushed, unfamiliar voices of _ children _trickle out in the wake of her silence. 

“Is that really him? Is he in there?”

_ “Shh. _Remember, best behavior.”

“I made no such promise.”

His bewilderment must be plain on his face and Bentina smiles at him, tense and apologetic. Instead of answering his unasked question, she turns and pushes the door open wide. 

“One at a time now,” she says, in a tone too kind to be admonishing. 

Three boys file into the library, strangers to Scrooge. They look dreadfully alike, identical in height and nearly in expression. Brothers at the very least but triplets more likely. One boy, dressed in blue, disregards Bentina’s order almost immediately and pushes to the front, putting himself in front of another boy in a red shirt and one in a green hoodie. The latter two watch Scrooge with a healthy dose of wariness, though the one in green looks more suspicious than anything. 

“Scrooge McDuck!” the boy in blue announces, only for his confidence to finally falter under Scrooge’s hard stare. “Um...I’m...we’re…”

Far from amused, Scrooge crosses his arms over his chest and looks over their heads to glare at Bentina. “Beakley, what is the meaning of this?” Webbigail lingers in the doorway beside her grandmother, and surprise niggles at the back of his mind. He hadn’t even noticed her come in. 

Bentina shakes her head, expression oddly grave. She holds up her hand, asking for patience. 

Scrooge looks back at the children as the one in green guides the, now red-faced, boy in blue behind their red clad brother with a hand on his shoulder. All three stand close together, a protective phalanx of sorts, though they are armed with nothing but overly large sweaters and rucksacks. 

Annoyance at a quiet evening ruined makes Scrooge want to snap at them, have them thrown out on their ears without another word spoken. He doesn’t entertain guests, much less _ visitors, _not anymore. But unless Bentina has been replaced with some sort of changeling, she is asking this of him, and he is obliged to give her his patience if nothing else.

The boy in red steps forward. 

“We apologize for intruding, Mr. McDuck,” he says politely. He wrings his hands in front of him, and something about the gesture strikes Scrooge as familiar. “I’m Huey Duck. These are my brothers, Dewey and Louie.” 

Quite without intending to, Scrooge’s gaze flickers over to the boys in question. The boy in blue, Dewey he supposes, waves without looking at him. Louie locks eyes with him, though all he does is offer a silent nod. 

Perhaps sensing that Scrooge’s patience is not drawn from an infinite reserve, and is in fact running thin, Huey continues in a rush. Scrooge is wholly unprepared to hear what he says next. 

With words alone, he makes what was left of Scrooge’s world shatter for the second time in a decade. 

“I think you knew our Uncle Donald.” 

  
  
  
  


Neither Huey or Louie can begrudge Dewey his grand entrance, or to put it kindly, his attempt at one. Of the three of them, he’s always been the most mystified by Scrooge McDuck the Adventurer, more than Scrooge McDuck the Smartest of the Smarties or Scrooge McDuck the Richest of the Rich. 

They’re all nervous as it is, filing past Mrs. Beakley into a library grander than any of them have ever seen. Like the rest of the mansion, the ceilings are impossibly high, the rugs ornate, walls and podiums and shelves littered with artifacts that traverse the centuries. Huey is certain that the terrarium on a nearby table has a supposedly _ extinct _Xerces blue butterfly sitting on a branch gently fluttering its wings. 

Huey wrings his hands just like he did before he gave his speech on aquatic conservation to earn the Public Speaking Badge. He remembers with no small amount of heartache Uncle Donald telling him later that day how he used to wring his hands in the same way at their age. 

Louie’s stuffed his hands into the pocket of his hoodie to disguise any of his own fidgeting. It’s Dewey who bursts past them, for a moment as ebullient and dramatic as he’s ever been, like he was when they still had Uncle Donald. It fades swiftly, and Dewey with it, practically withering under Scrooge McDuck’s hard stare. 

Huey isn’t sure what he expected from the richest duck in the world. Before the crash, in the alternating light and dark of the station wagon as they left behind the only home they’ve ever known, the expression on Uncle Donald’s face was fraught. He’d never mentioned Scrooge McDuck before that night. 

But Huey’s done his research, dug through decades of articles from when McDuck was less of a shut-in, and read every unofficial biography he could get his hands on. He even found old news clips and interviews from the 1960s, when he first earned his title of Richest. None of that prepares him for the man himself. 

Scrooge McDuck is somehow smaller than he expected. He doesn’t have his cane or his tophat now, and his headfeathers are slightly mussed. Without his more extravagant accessories, he could almost be mistaken for any old man they might see on the street. They discover him in a quiet library not in some vast vault counting his wealth. There’s a book on the table behind him that he must have been reading before they interrupted. 

Scrooge McDuck is also glaring at them, and despite his surprisingly average appearance he is still the most important person they will ever meet and they are wasting his time. 

Louie realizes this too and tugs on Dewey’s arm. They don’t tease each other as they might once have, not now; Louie’s face is sympathetic. They know how badly Dewey wanted to make a good impression. 

Huey steps forward, his heart in his throat, and the weight of his and his brothers’ future weighs heavily on his shoulders, poised to crush him. He says the words they’ve said to countless people, countless times, in some desperate hope of finally arriving at this moment. They’ve said it to each other in the night as if to assure themselves of its veracity, because their uncle does not lie: _ Uncle Donald knows Scrooge McDuck. _Only this time, unlike all the others, he is finally able to say the words to the man himself. 

“I think you knew our Uncle Donald,” Huey says, and he hesitates at the last second, afraid to declare it as fact because McDuck is a powerful man and could easily deny it. He could easily do a lot of things, including but not limited to having them arrested for trespassing. 

But Huey forgets about the worries clamoring at the forefront of his mind as he observes the change overtaking Scrooge McDuck. 

For a moment they’ve taken him aback, and his eyes go very very wide. He looks at them again, much more closely than before. Scrutinizing, Huey realizes, as McDuck’s eyes narrow and he searches for something in their faces or bearing known only to him. It reminds Huey painfully of Uncle Donald, who had the uncanny ability to frustrate all attempts at mischief by merely needing to look at them and eke out all signs of deception.

“Donald,” McDuck says slowly, as though the name is unfamiliar. “Donald Duck?”

“We’re his nephews,” Dewey blurts, eager to have McDuck’s attention again even after his initial blunder. However, this time he doesn’t move from behind Huey. “Show him,” Dewey whispers, prodding him. 

Weeks of planning have led them here, with Huey as their sole, unified voice. Their organized chaos only led to pain when they pleaded with the police, their foster parents, anyone who might listen, and they knew they could not risk that same failure here. They’ve had to train themselves to be silent when questions are welling up inside them, to allow one to speak for three where they never would have permitted it before. 

It’s a small sacrifice to make, but a sacrifice all the same. 

Huey pulls his backpack off one shoulder so that he can unzip the front pocket. From inside he removes Uncle Donald’s wallet, the only sign of him they were able to uncover that night, discarded under the front seat. It’s Huey who has been entrusted with it, the final tether to the life they used to live and the family they used to be outside of photo and memory. 

“Donald Fauntleroy Duck,” Huey says as evenly as he’s able, sliding out Uncle Donald’s driver’s license and holding it out to Scrooge McDuck. Uncle Donald looks terrible in his photo, one eye half closed and face captured in a grimace. Once a subject of casual mockery, they cherish it now as one of his few belongings still in their possession. 

Scrooge McDuck’s expression hardens as he glances from the license to Huey’s face. He forces himself into stillness, allowing nothing in his features to imply they might be lying. Scrooge McDuck hasn’t thrown them out yet, which means Uncle Donald _ must _ have been telling the truth. _ He must have. _

When he reaches out to take the license, Huey has to remind himself to let go. 

Seconds scrape by at the speed of glaciers and Huey begins fretting in earnest. Scrooge McDuck examines Uncle Donald’s driver’s license in complete silence, poring over every detail on the small piece of plastic. Huey doesn’t know if he’s searching to determine its authenticity or trying to place Uncle Donald’s face in the vast catalogue of his memory and the uncertainty sends his heart galloping in his chest, making his breaths short and painful. 

Sensing his mounting anxiety, or perhaps hearing the way his breaths begin to wheeze, Dewey fists his hand in the back of Huey’s shirt. It’s a small thing, but it grounds him to the moment until McDuck tears his gaze away a grueling thirty seconds later. 

“Why do you have this?” he asks, on the cusp of accusing, staring at them with a furrowed brow like they’re a riddle he’s attempting to parse. “Where is...where is your uncle?”

It’s the moment of truth; they’ve traveled all this way to convince the most powerful man in the city not only to believe an impossible mystery, but to help them solve it. 

Everything is riding on him, and Huey finally _ chokes _under Scrooge McDuck’s scrutiny. Terrified of ruining all their hard work, his throat seals up as though it has been lined with glue and the longer McDuck watches him the more impossible it is to speak. 

Louie buys Huey the precious seconds he needs to collect himself, whether or not he intended to do so. He doesn’t say a word but holds his hand up to McDuck, palm out, his brows raised expectantly. 

McDuck stares for a moment, uncomprehending, before seemingly recalling the flimsy piece of plastic in his hand, one of their last connections to Uncle Donald. He hands it to Louie, still looking a bit startled. Louie immediately pockets it, like it’s a rare jewel, like it’s a hundred dollar bill, not the worthlessness of its reality. This is what they’ve been reduced to—cherishing a face frozen in plastic and not the man himself. 

This, finally, is what spurs Huey to blurt out the speech they’ve prepared, if in a halting and haphazard way, because _ this is their last chance. _ If Scrooge McDuck doesn't believe them, if he won’t help them, then Uncle Donald is as good as dead because they can’t do this on their own. They’ve come this far, but can go no farther. 

“That’s why we’re here, Mr. McDuck,” Huey says with a calm he doesn’t feel. His fingers tangle like fishing wire until he clamps his hands together, stilling the movement. “Our Uncle Donald....our Uncle Donald is missing. He was kidnapped right—right in front of us but the police wouldn’t believe us. We knew we had to find you because Uncle Donald was bringing us _ here _before he was taken and he said...he said he knew you.” 

Huey stares at the collar of Scrooge McDuck’s coat the entire time he speaks. It’s the only way he’s able to get it all out, to finally drop at his feet the heavy load their story has become, and he feels hollow yet unburdened by the end of it. But for all of his daring, Huey is still the most cautious of his siblings, the one who tries never to insinuate or offend. It’s Louie who calls him out on his half-truth, however indirectly. Louie looks Scrooge McDuck dead in the eyes and says, “Uncle Donald said you _ owed _him.” By his tone, he more than implies that they’ve come to collect.

A breathless few seconds go by before Huey risks a glance upward, terrified of what awaits him on McDuck’s face. 

But Scrooge McDuck isn’t even looking at them. His frozen expression is fixated over their heads, on where Mrs. Beakley still lingering by the door with her strange, deadly granddaughter. 

“That’s not—” McDuck says and stops. “Is it—”

Huey whirls around, and his brothers immediately follow suit. Mrs. Beakley’s expression betrays nothing, much less the answers to McDuck’s aborted questions. There’s something of regret in the twinge of her brows but little else is evidenced behind her cat-eye glasses. With no more help forthcoming on her end, Huey turns back to McDuck who continues to flounder. 

“Mr. McDuck,” he pleads, “do you believe us?”

Scrooge McDuck raises a hand to his beak and just _ looks _at the three of them again. Above his glasses his features are a war, flickering from anger to disbelief to brief, piercing anguish. 

After an eternity of less than a minute, he snaps, “Do you know who I am?” 

Huey is pulled up short by the non sequitur. Confusion is an uncomfortable sensation, an itch under his feathers he cannot scratch. “I don’t…”

McDuck lowers his hand and his voice is no longer as acrimonious. “Do you know who I am?” he asks again. It’s nearly a plea.

Huey glances between his brothers, who look as bewildered as he does.

“Um...you’re Scrooge McDuck?” Dewey answers slowly, as though he’s expecting it to be a trick question. 

"Aye." McDuck grimaces. “Aye,” he repeats, a whisper of sound. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story is turning into a complete S1 rewrite, which I actually don't mind! With this chapter, I was really eager to contrast Scrooge and the boys' first meeting with the canon version, since everything is a little topsy-turvy in this AU. I hope you enjoy, and let me know what you thought in the comments!


End file.
